Sermon in Lent 1B- Comfort in the Wilderness.
Grace and peace be unto you from God our Father, and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. Today on the first day of Lent we hear again about Jesus’ baptism. Now if you were to look at baptisms we do here at Trinity, you might expect Jesus to celebrate afterward. We light special candles, give you presents, and there’s even a tiny parade where we introduce you to all the smiling faces of the community that promises to nurture you in faith. We warn you about the choir. We welcome you into the Lord’s family. We take pictures. We may even clap and cheer! But in our Gospel story today, Jesus does not go home and take a nap after his baptism, nor does he go to celebrate afterward by having lunch at the Red Plate Diner with his family. There’s no feast, no...
Read MoreSermon on Epiphany 3b- Repentance
Grace and peace be unto you from God our Father, and our Lord and savior Jesus Christ, Amen. Imagine with me a boy on a typical day in High School. His backpack balloons out from his back like a bag of cement. Locker doors are shuddering on their hinges as kids haplessly throw books into their metallic bottoms. It could be lunchtime, and the smell of overmoist bread, mustard, and salami wafts through the air. Now there’s also a particular girl who this boy is pining after. He thinks he’s in love. We’ll call her Jenny. He’s been sitting Jenny’s at lunch table for several weeks in a row. Today he finds out from listening to her conversation, that Jenny really likes this band called Third Eye Blind. It seems to be all that she can talk about, and this song...
Read MoreSermon For the First Sunday of Christmas aka. “Intern Sunday”
Luther’s Prayer for Before a Sermon: “Eternal God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, give us your Holy Spirit who writes the preached Word into our hearts. May we receive and believe it and be cheered by it in eternity. Glorify your Word in our hearts and make it so bright and warm that we may find pleasure in it, through your Holy Spirit think what is right, and by your power fulfill the Word, for the Sake of Jesus Christ your Son, our Lord. Amen.” Luke 2:22-40. So what’s left? The presents are open, our stockings lie rumpled and bunched a corner. The lights are out and our houses in post-party disorder. We cooked the goose, turned all festivities loose. The Fahoo forays and dahoo dorays have all been sung. Children are sluggish with...
Read MoreSermonett/Advent 2 Reflection- John 1:1-5
Last week for Advent Fellowship night, I told you a story about my last bit of walking along the Appalachian Trail. This week, I would like to share with you a story about a different kind of advent walking. One of the floors that I was in charge of during my summer as a hospital chaplain in Richmond Virginia, was the bone marrow transplant floor. It was a floor nicknamed by the staff as the “hopeless floor.” If there ever was a floor in the hospital that had beds just for darkness, it may be that floor. They called it the hopeless floor, because a majority of patients that get bone-marrow transplants are at the end of their ropes. They have already tried dozens of treatments, and this is often a floor of last gasps. Now, there was a woman on this floor who paged...
Read MoreSermonett/Advent 1 Reflection- Romans 5:1-6
It is a chilly night in Maine on September 20th. The sky is clear, a few early leaves are floating down from the trees. The stars are out, and shivering with thoughts about autumn. I cannot sleep, the boards of the lean-to shelter seem to toss and turn as much as I do. I have hiked 2,166 miles along the Appalachian Trail over mountains, through farms, across rivers, over rocks, over roots, and under trees from Georgia all the way up to the heart of Maine. I have pressed on through snow, mud, rain, hail, thunder, bears, moose droppings, hunger, blisters, heat, and cold. Now there are only ten miles left between me and Mount Katahdin. One more day of hiking, one more mountain to climb, and I can say I hiked the entire Appalachian Trail. I had waited, working and...
Read MoreSermon on The Parable of the Ten Bridesmaids.
Grace be unto you from God our Father and our Lord and savior Jesus Christ, Amen. Sometimes I wish Jesus would just keep his mouth shut. I’m going along just fine, I’m fighting on his side as he squabbles with the chief priests and elders in the temple, and then he drops something like this parable today. Really Jesus? You had to go there? I bet you just said that to make it difficult for 21st century vicars to preach. You purposely made up that parable to make sleepless nights for people like me, didn’t you? It is as if he said: “Let’s watch the preachers squirm and wiggle about this one on Sunday.” In all seriousness, the parable of the ten bridesmaids is a difficult text. Its imagery is obscure and it does not easily translate into modern day understanding. It...
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